Getting started with SIRIS Imaged

Topic

This article describes the SIRIS imaging tool used for creating SIRIS Imaged deployments.

Environment

• SIRIS Imaged

Description

The SIRIS imaged utility lets you convert compatible hardware to a SIRIS continuity appliance. See the following sections for system requirements and configuration recommendations.

• Hardware requirements
• Unsupported Hardware
• Recommended CPU and RAM for imaged Datto appliances
• Storage configuration
• Next steps

Hardware requirements

CPU and Memory

• Minimum quad-core 64-bit processor (Intel preferred).
• The minimum amount of RAM as determined by local storage capacity. See the Recommended CPU and Ram for imaged Datto appliances section of this article.

NIC

• 1GbE DHCP-enabled Internet connectivity. Datto recommends dual NICs.The target system's networking environment must meet the BCDR Networking and Bandwidth Requirements.

DISK

• OS: at least 120 GB SSD (SATA or NVMe). 60 GB would be allocated to the OS partition.
• Pool Drive: minimum of two drives (either HDD or SSD, has to be the same type, same model preferred), at least 1TB in capacity.
• Slog Drive (optional): this drive would boost your system virtualization performance, and a low capacity NVMe drive is preferred.

BIOS

• BIOS capable of USB Boot. UEFI Boot is now also supported.
• VT-x (Intel Virtualization Technology for IA-32 and Intel 64 Processors) must be enabled in the BIOS.
• Secure Boot must be disabled in the BIOS.
• All SATA hardware to be imaged must have the External Device option for its port set to Disabled in the device BIOS.

Unsupported hardware

• Pre-existing RAID configurations, both hardware, and software are unsupported. The SIRIS imager will create its software RAID configuration during the conversion process. If the target hardware has a hardware RAID, disable it. If possible, enable HBA mode (sometimes called Initiator-Target mode or Integrated RAID mode; see Oracle's documentation on the subject (external link) for more information. Although not technically required for SIRIS Imaged devices, Initiator-target capable storage controllers are needed for proper drive health reporting
• External SAN configurations are not supported.
• You cannot use removable media as the device's OS drive.
• Versions of the SIRIS Imager on media other than a USB stick are unsupported.

Recommended CPU and RAM for Imaged Datto appliances

For best performance, Datto recommends that the target hardware meet or exceed the following minimum resources. Allocating fewer system resources than recommended can result in performance limitations during restoration and disaster recovery. The imager can create RAID configurations up to RAID 10.

Datto supports all Ubuntu Server Certified Hardware that meets these requirements.

Storage configuration

SIRIS Imager supports RAID 1, 5, 6, or 10. You can calculate the actual pool capacity based on the number of drives and raid configuration by using a RAID Calculator (external link). Refer to the table above to find the model for your device and pick the model with storage capacity smaller than your actual pool capacity. For example, if you have a pool of 14TB, you would pick SI12 (12TB) as the device model.

• Non-standard RAID configurations (i.e., using a 2TB drive to make a 1TB storage pool with no redundancy) are not supported.
• Datto devices technically support RAIDz, as they are ZFS based. It is referred simply as RAID in our documentation, as the differences are minimal.

Next Steps

If the target system meets the minimum system requirements for imaging, proceed to the Converting Hardware to a SIRIS With Datto Utilities article.